


the prodigal

by Naraht



Category: White Nights (1985)
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Soviet Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 18:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19068004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: In 1997, Kolya doesn't quite return to Russia. Galina doesn't come to America. But still, somehow, they meet halfway.





	the prodigal

**Author's Note:**

> This was partly inspired by the later life of Mikhail Baryshnikov, who as far as I know has never visited Russia again, but did [go on tour to the Baltics](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/01/19/the-soloist-2) in the late 1990s.
> 
> It was also inspired by the [interestingly chequered history of the Hotell Viru](http://thetallinncollector.com/category/hotel-viru-special/) in Tallinn.

_Vilnius, Lithuania_  
_23 October 1997_

Dear Galya,

This morning we landed in Vilnius. Business class with Lufthansa only lasted as far as Frankfurt. Murk of dawn, windows of the plane blurred half with rain and half with slush. 

On the airside the terminal is a modern 90s monstrosity but once we wound our way through what seemed like a mile of hallways I found myself in a classic 1950s Soviet arrivals hall. We might have been arriving at Pulkovo – the old terminal of course. Or Yekaterinburg. Or Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky for that matter.

I think I actually flinched a little when I stepped out of the terminal and looked up at the facade and saw those damn frescos of workers and farmers and all the rest. I wanted to run back and throw myself onto the plane before it took off again. If it hadn't been for Raymond I wouldn't have dared to step into the car. 

Raymond took me by the arm and got me into the car somehow. Just like it was a perfectly normal thing to have to do. He knows what it's like. But he got sent to Vietnam. What's my excuse? When I was a boy I went to the store for my mother and they were all out of sausages? A teacher at the Vaganova School gave me a slap on the leg when I wasn't turned out enough? Some trauma, you might say! Even Chaiko never actually laid a finger on me.

"Just breathe, Nick," said Raymond.

That didn't help. I've never had any problems with breathing. My lung capacity is fine, cigarettes or no.

I just kept telling myself that Raymond was with me. That if I had to escape, Raymond would be beside me. If it weren't for that, I would have been at the Lufthansa counter booking the next flight home.

It's strange finding myself back in – I was going to write 'back in the Soviet Union' but there isn't anything left to be back in. It's just gone. And you're still in a different country.

Yours ever,

Kolya

***

_Lviv, Ukraine_  
_30 October 1997_

Galya,

I've never been to Lviv before. Isn't that strange?

Of course the residents can speak Russian; they just don't want to. I empathize. Life would be better if we all just spoke French, like pre-Revolutionary aristocrats.

Only time for a postcard. Sorry.

Kolya xx

***

_Tallinn, Estonia_  
_11 November 1997_

Dear Galya,

We're staying at the Hotell Viru. Oh what memories.

There's no cabaret these days which is a good thing because it could never live up to 1972. Do you remember 1972? By then all the tours had probably started to blur together in your mind but it was new to me. Dancing was new to me. So were you.

Now the Hotell Viru is about as glamorous as I am – i.e. battered, creaky, not very – but of course we felt differently then. Lucky foreign guests, with half the Estonian National Ballet moonlighting in the floor show. You'll have to tell me the story of how you managed to get yourself into the chorus line that night. All I heard was the gossip at morning class. I was so jealous. I only got to dance with you in _Giselle_.

I still wish I'd been there to see it.

All my love,  
Kolya

P.S. I told Raymond the story. He said he would feel likewise if he weren't a happily married man.

***

_Tallinn, Estonia_  
_13 November 1997_

Dear Galya,

Audiences have been amazing everywhere. Did I really worry that no one would come to see Balanchine and Bejart and Tharp? That no one here would understand why I'd want to blend tapdance with contemporary ballet? Well, I was wrong. No brickbats, only flowers... even for Raymond and me, ancient though we are.

Maybe it's the theatres themselves that I imagine scowling disapprovingly at us. All that old grandeur in the Lviv Opera House, slowly sinking into its underground river. It's seen more than we have: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Second Polish Republic, the Nazi occupation, the USSR and now an independent Ukraine. It seems ridiculous now that we thought the Soviet Union was going to last forever. Those paintings overhead in the Estonian Opera House make me want to vomit – all that godawful socialist realism with Red Army soldiers and happy peasants and combine harvesters. Why have they not covered them up yet?

These days I wake up early whether I'm performing or not. Yesterday morning I went out at dawn, a long walk along the coast towards Pirita. (I didn't get quite that far.)

It's winter already here. You won't be surprised by this, but I was. My Los Angeles winter coat was woefully inadequate, so I just walked faster. That smack of wind in the face, those little squalls of flurries, the piled clouds and the shafts of sunlight out over the Gulf of Finland. So like ~~Leningrad~~ Saint Petersburg, so close that I felt that I could almost reach out and touch ~~you~~ it. When I got back to the Hotell Viru I had to drink two cups of black coffee to warm up.

I still don't believe that you're coming to meet me in Helsinki. Don't worry about the hotel room. I told you I'm paying. Whatever the state of the ruble, it's not extravagant in dollars. Don't let your pride force you into some decaying post-Soviet fleatrap.

Besides, I want you to stay with me.

Until then,

Kolya


End file.
